DENVER (MarketWatch) — The first thing I should mention about Larry Doyle are his life’s priorities: faith, family, capitalism.

He grew up in a big Catholic family in Boston. His father was a lawyer. His mother was a real estate agent. He was one of eight siblings, five of whom landed work on Wall Street.

After graduating from the College of the Holy Cross in 1983, Doyle began his career at First Boston. There he met a guy named Laurence Fink, who helped pioneer the mortgage-backed security. (Today, Fink is CEO of BlackRock Inc. /quotes/zigman/249424/compositeBLK-0.72%
, the giant multinational investment firm.)

“Larry hired me,” Doyle said. “He goes, ’You are really not going to know anything for the first year, so mind your Ps and Qs, and go get me a cup of coffee.’”

Doyle did whatever he was asked to do. Before long, he got a position on the trading desk. He worked at First Boston for nearly seven years. Then he moved to Bear Stearns. Then UBS. Then Bank of America. Then J.P. Morgan Chase.

Photo courtesy of Larry Doyle

Larry Doyle

Doyle, now 51 years old, left the mortgage-backed-securities business in 2006, well before it imploded and practically toppled the entire U.S. economy. But he attributes this move to circumstance, not foresight.

“You could start to see significant cracks,” he said, “primarily in the subprime space. But I couldn’t forecast what was going to happen.”

The mortgage-backed securities he trafficked were higher quality. In its infancy, the mortgage-backed-securities industry wasn’t taking crazy risks with subprime paper, and toward the end, J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. /quotes/zigman/272085/compositeJPM-0.74%
made a decision to stay out of the subprime end of it, Doyle said.

“I never sold something where I thought, ‘Oh man, this is truly a piece of garbage,’” he said.

But Doyle said he went to work on Wall Street knowing it sometimes took advantage of the people who work and invest there.

“I wanted to take advantage of Wall Street without Wall Street taking advantage of me,” he said. “That was always my mantra. I kept it to myself, and it worked.”

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Since leaving J.P. Morgan Chase, Doyle has been investing the money he made over his career. Married 24 years and a father of four, he lives in Connecticut and now spends his time mentoring students, staying involved with his church and writing a blog, www.senseoncents.com
, where he said some of the darndest things about Wall Street.

Regarding the missing $1.6 billion at the imploded firm run by former U.S. Sen. Jon Corzine, Doyle wrote: “We need an MF Global grand jury.... Money does not vaporize. Money is misappropriated. Money is stolen.”

On last week’s big settlement among 49 states, federal regulators and five major Wall Street firms, including J.P. Morgan Chase, Doyle wrote:

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